Scorpion Shards

Lourdes stepped out from behind the lighthouse to see ev­eryone crowding around Knapp, who compared his star chart to the heavens above him.

“Mentarsus-H!” he announced. “It says here that it’s sixteen light years away—that means it blew up before most of you were born!”

Knapp immediately started to explain, “It took all those years for the light of the explosion to reach the earth. Like when you’re in the bleachers at the ball park, you see the player swing, but don’t hear the crack of the bat until a second later. Space is so vast that light takes years to get from star to star. That star blew up over six­ teen years ago, but we’re just finding out about it now.”

While everyone else marveled at this grand cosmic dis­play, Michael and Lourdes lingered beyond the fringe of the crowd—touched by the nova with an intensity none of the others felt. It was as if the light illuminated some part of themselves that had always been hidden in shad­ows.

“I have to go!” Michael suddenly exclaimed. “I have to go now!” He was already fumbling in his pockets for the keys to his van.

“I have to go with you,” said Lourdes, her eyes filling with tears she could not explain.

Yes! thought Michael. It had to be the two of them. They were both being drawn away—drawn west. They had to travel west because . . .

. . . Because there were others! Others who were like them.

The truth came to him as if he had known it all along.

Michael could imagine them now—all of them looking up at the supernova at this same instant, in places far away.

“I have room in the van for you,” said Michael.

“I have a credit card,” said Lourdes, “if we need money.”

They hurried toward Michael’s van, as if they could afford no lost time.

Now those people standing around the telescope and all the other people in their lives seemed meaningless and unimportant.

Michael turned the key in the ignition with such force the starter screamed as the engine came to life.

“Where do we go?” asked Lourdes. “How will we know when we get there?”

But both of them knew there were no answers to such questions. In a moment they were gone, driving west, while their former classmates looked heavenward through a round patch of clear sky that was fixed over Montauk like an eye, staring unblinking into infinity.

PART II - FREE FALL

4. The Shadow Of The Distraction

The splintering of stone.

A deafening rumble as a mountainside pounced upon an unsuspecting neighborhood below. Five homes were destroyed by the massive boulders, and Dillon Cole, his wrecking-hunger now fed, gripped Deanna Chang and collapsed in her arms.

In the dim light they sat on the mountainside, hearing the shouts from below as neighbors came out to help one another. Through it all, Deanna held Dillon tightly.

“Please let no one be hurt,” Dillon whispered desper­ately.

Deanna had watched in horror as the row of homes on this hill above Lake Tahoe was obliterated. She watched in horror . . . but not in fear. Even now, as she held Dillon, she wasn’t frightened. Her fears, which had been building for hours, vanished the moment Dillon satisfied his wrecking-hunger—and it had been that way every time.

In the four days since they had run from the hospital in San Francisco, Deanna had stood by as Dillon sent a driv­erless semi down a ravine; sunk an empty barge on the Sacramento River; and shorted-out a switching station, plunging the entire community of Placerville into dark­ness. She knew she should have felt terror and revulsion at each of these catastrophes, yet, against all reason, a sud­den peace always filled her in the aftermath. All that de­ struction didn’t feel real to her in those moments after—it seemed little more than a painted canvas before her.

But Dillon was real, and she always turned her new­found calm to him, comforting him and his conscience, which had a strong case for feeling guilty. She thought she was beginning to understand that strange calm: she was in the shadow of Dillon’s destruction now—and that was far less terrifying than being in its path—for if those horrible things were happening to someone else, it meant that they weren’t happening to her.

What remained in that swollen calm was a single ques­tion in Deanna’s mind.

How?

How does he accomplish these things?

She looked to the night sky—to the supernova that still shone in the heavens, as if it could answer her.

“Is it winking at you?” asked Dillon, turning to look at it as well. “Is it telling you all the secrets of the universe?”

Deanna shook her head. “It’s just telling me to go east.”

Dillon nodded. “I know.”

It was true. From the moment its light appeared in the sky, she and Dillon were falling east; carried by an irresist­ible current, like driftwood pulled toward a raging water­fall. Suddenly Deanna’s aching wrist and aching body didn’t matter. Her family didn’t matter—they seemed like people from a different lifetime and, aside from a sin­gle postcard to tell them she was all right, they had been shuffled far back in Deanna’s mind. All that mattered was moving east with Dillon—and all because of that star.

Maybe the others know more, thought Deanna. Oh, yes, she knew about The Others—they both did. Although they spoke of them only once, they knew that it was The Oth­ers who were drawing them east. It was Dillon who didn’t want to discuss them—as if this knowledge of The Others was too important a thing to say out loud.

Deanna could swear she could sometimes hear their voices in the rustling of leaves—see their faces in dreams she couldn’t quite remember. She thought to tell Dillon, but thought better of it.

Far below, at the bottom of the hillside, an ambulance could be heard arriving at the scene of the rock slide.

“No one was supposed to get hurt. . . .” said Dillon, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

Deanna pushed the sound of the ambulance out of her mind. Instead she focused on Dillon—how he needed her and how she needed him to keep her fears away. How strong they were together.

A trickle of pebbles fell past them on the dark hillside, settling in the aftermath of Dillon’s rock slide.

“I don’t understand how you did it,” she asked him. “All you did was throw a stone . . .”

“It wasn’t just a stone,” he told her. “It was the right stone.”

But it was still beyond Deanna to understand just what he meant by that. He had thrown a stone, and that stone had begun an inconceivable chain of events—his stone hit another, which then rolled against a larger boulder, and in a few moments the whole mountainside beneath them was falling away before their eyes. It would have been wonderful, if it wasn’t so horrible.

“Do you hate me, Deanna?” Dillon asked. “Do you hate me for the things that I do?”

Did she hate him? She probably ought to hate him, but how could she when he was the only one who didn’t run from her? How could she hate him when he treasured every ounce of comfort she gave him? The more he needed her, the more she loved him—she couldn’t help it. Whatever you do, I’ll forgive you, Dillon, she said to herself, be­cause I know the goodness inside you—even if no one else can see.